it's not what you've lost (but it's what you find)
by shineyma
Summary: Jemma is given cause to regret just how little of her time in HYDRA she's shared with her team.


A/N:** Warning** for implications of sexual assault, but that's all—implications. There **is no **sexual assault; it does not happen, it did not happen, and it _will_ not happen. It is just suggested, falsely, that it did. If this is something that will trigger you, please do proceed with caution.

I have lots of comments to reply to and will do so ASAP, but for now I need to go finish a case study. Please excuse my lack of timeliness!

Title is from Ellie Goulding's _Wish I Stayed_. Thanks for reading and, as always, please be gentle if you review!

* * *

Jemma is quiet when she comes back from HYDRA.

She doesn't mean to be. It's just that after—after everything, she finds her voice sticking in her throat more often than not. She's spent _months_ carefully guarding herself, choosing each word deliberately, maintaining a delicate balance between too amoral and not amoral enough.

She's spent months knowing that she was a single slip away from death (or worse) and now, in the safety of the Playground, she finds that her new habits are hard to break.

It's just as well.

The others are angry at her for leaving. She understands. She doesn't hold it against them. But it makes it easier to retreat into science and practicality with them. She can give them facts and figures, provide medical treatment when necessary, and hide what she's feeling—hide the tremors and the nightmares and the occasional difficulty breathing—behind the most tenuous of fronts.

It eases the strain on her. Her pretense of being fine doesn't need to be convincing when no one is attempting to look past it.

It's better this way.

Or at least she thinks it is. At first.

Three months after her return, staring down Grant Ward across the wreckage of what used to be a civilian laboratory, she has reason to regret her silence. There are so many things the others don't know about her time away, and he's one of them.

"So," he says. "You really are with SHIELD."

SHIELD. Yes. She needs to do her job.

"What are you doing here?" she asks. Her voice barely shakes at all. "What's HYDRA's interest in this lab?"

Predictably, he ignores the question.

"Gotta say," he sighs. "I was really holding out hope for a misunderstanding."

"It wasn't, I'm afraid." She forces herself to meet his eyes, but it gains her nothing. He's completely unreadable. "I am genuinely SHIELD."

He shakes his head. "Shame."

Her comm comes to life in her ear, May asking for a status report. It only distracts her for a second, but a second is all he needs; before she knows it, he's crossed the room and disarmed her. He doesn't even bother to keep the ICER he takes from her, simply lobs it across the lab.

"And I'll take this, too," he says, and pulls the comm out of her ear. She flinches when he steps on it, and it makes him smile. "I'm guessing that'll bring your team running?"

"Yes," she says, wary. May will be more than a match for him, but the others? He could kill them all, even Trip, without breaking a sweat. "What are you going to do?"

He lifts a hand, rubs his thumb along the soot she knows is smeared on her cheek. It's been a long day of digging through the rubble; she's sure she's a mess. Not that it bothers her to have him see her in this state. Of course not.

That would be ridiculous.

"What else?" he asks, grinning wickedly. "I'm gonna have fun with it."

It takes less than two minutes for Skye and Hunter to arrive. By the time they do, Grant's dragged her across the room to stand right in front of the emergency exit. He's got one arm securely around her waist and his other hand wrapped around her throat; he's not actually hurting her, but his grip is like steel. Her minimal training in self-defense is no match for his strength, to say nothing of his decade of experience—she doesn't even attempt to break his hold.

Skye and Hunter enter the room with their guns already drawn, and as soon as they spot Jemma's predicament, said guns are aimed at Grant.

"Careful," he warns them. "You so much as twitch and she's dead."

It occurs to her that he's chosen an odd manner of threatening her life. Certainly a gun to her head or even a knife to her throat would be more effective. She's far too short to make a decent shield for him; a single headshot from one of the others would kill him instantly, and the grip he has on her isn't at a good angle to break her neck. She's sure he could manage it, but probably not before Skye or Hunter could shoot him.

What is he doing?

"Let her go, Ward," Skye orders, and Jemma starts.

"You've heard of me," Grant says, and she can hear a smile in his voice. "Interesting."

"Yeah, we cleaned up after that mess you left in Orlando," Hunter says. There's an edge behind his usually light-hearted tone, and it makes her uneasy. She had no idea that the others knew anything about Grant; she reported about him to Coulson, of course, but he never told her that anything came of it. "So believe me when I say that it will be a pleasure to shoot you in the face. Let her go."

"Hmm." The arm around her waist tightens slightly, and Grant eases them back a step, closer to the door. "You know, I don't think so. Jem and I have some catching up to do. Don't we, sweetheart?"

She can't speak.

Skye does it for her. "You know this jackass, Simmons?"

"Biblically," Grant offers helpfully. "Yes."

Jemma steels herself against the shocked, horrified looks she gets in response to that. Understandable, considering their apparent knowledge of him. It's not hyperbole to call Grant a monster, so it's no wonder they should think badly of her for sleeping with him. She could give them any number of excuses—the need to maintain her cover, the high-level intel her association with him gave her access to, the protection his regard gave her within HYDRA—but all of those excuses would be lies, and she's tired of lying.

So, as has become her wont, she says nothing.

"Huh," he says. "You never told them about us, Jem? That hurts."

"I didn't think there was much to say," she manages, and feels more than hears his resulting laugh.

"Well now you're just _trying_ to hurt me," he says. He slides his hand down her neck to rest flat against her clavicle, and she exhales shakily.

Intellectually, she knows she should be petrified right now. Intellectually, she is. He's one of HYDRA's top specialists and she's one of HYDRA's enemies, who also happens to be his ex-girlfriend. The chances of this ending well for her are very, very slim.

But she's missed him. She spent half of her time with him feeling guilty and terrified, true, but the other half…

The other half isn't something she should be thinking of right now. Or ever, really.

He's threatening her. He's threatening her and he's threatening her team—albeit implicitly—and she should not be anything but frightened. The tension she's been carrying around for months shouldn't be easing under his touch. His arm around her waist should be terrifying, not steadying.

"You being SHIELD does explain a lot, though." He traces his fingers along her collarbone, contemplative, and then addresses the others. "She spent a long time resisting me, you know. Which, come on." He gestures to himself. "Who would turn _this_ down? Probably should've guessed she was a mole from that alone."

The casual arrogance, so very typical of him, shouldn't make affection swell in her chest. It really, truly shouldn't. Not at the best of times, and certainly not when he's holding her _hostage_.

"But I didn't give it much thought," he continues, wrapping his hand around her throat once more. "Once I got her past her resistance, it didn't seem to matter."

That, on the other hand, causes nothing but annoyance. _Past her resistance_—as though she were a recalcitrant child throwing a tantrum, rather than a grown woman with reasonable objections to dating a _murderer._

"Past her resistance?" Skye echoes, mouth twisting. "What the hell does _that_ mean?"

Jemma can feel the shift of Grant's cheek against her temple as he smirks, and it makes her blood run cold. Her annoyance disappears under a sudden rush of dread. Somehow, she knows exactly what he's about to say.

"Well," he laughs. His hand slips a little higher up her throat, forcing her head back against his shoulder. "What can I say? I'm a persuasive kind of guy. Irresistible, you might say."

There's a horrible innuendo in his tone, and she watches the others take it to mean exactly what he intends them to. Skye has gone pale. Hunter looks as though he's about to be sick.

It's not true, what he's implying. She resisted him at first, yes—because he was the enemy and a specialist besides, and she was a spy with very little in the way of training—but he won her over by…well, by wooing her. He brought her interesting specimens from the field, expressed interest in her work, and lingered in her lab for hours at a time, just to chat.

She resisted him because it was the right thing to do. She gave in because she was lonely and he made her smile.

There was no coercion involved at all. But that's not the impression he's just given the others.

"Grant," she starts, and he shushes her.

"Shh, sweetheart." He presses a kiss to her temple, and she swallows (an odd sensation, with his hand still around her throat). "I can see why you wouldn't mention me to your friends. Can't say it doesn't hurt my feelings, but…I forgive you."

She has no idea what he's doing. Well, no, actually, she knows _exactly_ what he's doing, which is leading her team to draw entirely the wrong conclusions about their relationship. What she doesn't know is _why_.

"I'm not asking for forgiveness," she says, because she can't let that go unremarked.

"Because you think you don't deserve it?" he asks. He dips his head to speak directly in to her ear, adding lowly, "I don't disagree."

It's an ominous tone, and the words themselves are worrisome, but her body seems to be on another page. She shudders as his lips brush her ear. Her skin is buzzing underneath his touch, and she is taking far too much enjoyment from the way his arm keeps her pressed up against him. Whatever else he is, Grant is an extremely talented lover, and her libido has apparently chosen this moment to remind her of it.

What is _wrong_ with her? She's being held _hostage_, for goodness' sake!

"Because I don't need it," she corrects him. She means to be sharp, but her eyes catch on the expression on Skye's face, and instead her voice is small—and hardly convincing. "Not from you, at least."

Grant laughs. "Nice to see you've gotten some of your fight back." He tightens his hold on her waist, fingers flexing on her hip. "How long did that take?"

She tells herself she imagines the sincere undertone to his words. During their time together, Grant witnessed a good number of her nightmares—and was surprisingly comforting. The sheer number of times she cried herself (back) to sleep on top of him is actually embarrassing.

He was so concerned with her trauma, or at least very convincingly pretended to be. She took comfort in him: not only in his soothing words, but also in his towering rage over her slightly altered recounting of what she suffered after SHIELD's fall.

She's missed that comfort. She's missed _him._

She must be insane. That's the only explanation.

Skye and Hunter, as they were likely meant to, have clearly had their incorrect impressions reinforced by Grant's comment. Jemma has never seen Skye so angry, nor so distraught, and while Hunter's face is blank, she can tell even from this distance just how tightly he's holding his gun.

"You're gonna pay for that," Skye promises Grant. "But if you let Jemma go now, we'll be nice and kill you quickly."

She sounds completely serious, and it worries Jemma. The past year has been so hard on all of them, but Skye especially has suffered. She hates to see her hardened so.

"And if I don't?" Grant asks.

"I was just saying the other day that what our team really needs is someone to try out interrogation techniques on," Hunter says. "A torture test subject, if you like. I think you'd be a perfect fit for the job. Don't you?"

Jemma has the absurd urge to laugh, because Hunter genuinely _did_ say that on Monday. He has, thus far, been entirely unimpressed with their approach to their HYDRA prisoners, and suggested that Coulson—and the team as a whole—could use some pointers.

Grant actually does laugh. "Well, it's tempting. And I could definitely show you a thing or two." He brushes another kiss along her temple. "Couldn't I, Jem?"

She remembers the interrogation she was forced to witness at HYDRA—a civilian scientist, kidnapped and tortured for information on the work she was doing in biomechanics—and the urge to laugh is successfully quashed. She feels sick.

This is why she shouldn't miss him, she reminds herself. He's not just HYDRA, he's _evil_.

And once again, he's deliberately given Skye and Hunter the wrong idea. Skye looks rather sick herself, and Hunter appears to be actually shaking with fury.

He's purposely enraged them by making horrific implications about their relationship— horrific, _untrue_ implications—and suddenly, she sees why. They're so furious—so disgusted and, in Skye's case, sickened—that they've dropped their guard. He's distracted them.

"No—" she starts.

"But I'm gonna have to decline," Grant says over her, and before they can react—before _she_ can react—he lets go of her and shoots them both.

…With her ICER, she realizes, and relief hits her so hard that her knees actually buckle. Grant catches her by the arm and gives her a disapproving frown as he tucks the ICER away. She hadn't realized, distracted as she was by whole situation, just how close to where he threw it they ended up. She was focused on their proximity to the door, not the ICER.

"You left me for them?" Grant asks, giving the other side of the room a disdainful glance. Hunter and Skye aren't actually in view—they fell when he shot them, of course, and there are counters in the way—but he's glaring like they are. "Seriously?"

"I didn't leave you," she says, and tears her arm away from his hold. "I left HYDRA. You were incidental."

"Ouch," he grins. "Now that's just mean." He grimaces in Skye and Hunter's direction again. "But, seriously. _Those_ are the people you work for? I honestly thought I couldn't think less of them after learning they sent _you_ undercover." He shakes his head. "But, I was wrong."

"What is that supposed to mean?" she demands. Both because she honestly wants to know, and to stall. The others are elsewhere in this base, and Skye and Hunter wouldn't have come after her without alerting the rest of the team first. They're sure to get here as soon as they can; she just needs to keep Grant occupied until they arrive. "I was an excellent choice for an undercover agent. I fooled _you_, didn't I?"

"You did," he agrees easily. "And don't get me wrong, I'm very impressed by it. But you were the wrong choice."

"I was _not_—"

"Jemma," he interrupts, and his face is more serious than she's ever seen it. "You were having _screaming nightmares_ on a regular basis, not to mention fucking panic attacks."

"So?" she asks, flushing. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"What does that…" He groans and rubs a hand over his face. "You were _traumatized_—still are, I'm betting. And instead of getting you help with that, SHIELD sent you undercover, where you were isolated, cut off from your support network, and in constant danger. That's just fucking cruel."

She's fully aware that she's gaping unattractively at him, but she honestly can't help it. That—he just—

"_What_?"

What on earth does he care about her trauma? And calling it cruel that she was sent undercover after what happened to her…

A murderer is criticizing SHIELD's approach to her mental health. She has literally no idea how to respond to this.

"I told you I cared about you," he reminds her, and taps her cheek. "I meant it. I _mean_ it."

The past tense is unbelievable. The present tense is, too, but it's also troublesome.

"Now," he says. "Let's go."

"Go?" she asks, forcing her shock aside. "Go where?"

"You didn't think I was just gonna stand around waiting for the rest of SHIELD to show up, did you?" he asks.

Well…

"Come on," he says. His hand closes firmly around her upper arm, and he pushes the emergency exit open. "We're going home."

She tries to twist out of his grip, to get away, but she's no match for his strength, and he drags her through the door with ease, despite her desperate struggles.

And she _is_ desperate. For him, _home_ means an apartment in HYDRA headquarters, very near the top floor. HYDRA is the last place she wants to go—the last place she _should_ go. She'll be dead within the hour if she's lucky; if she's not, she'll be tortured, possibly for months.

HYDRA doesn't look kindly on those who betray them.

"If you care about me, you won't take me back there," she tries, giving up on breaking his grip. "Grant, please."

"Don't worry, sweetheart," he says, steering her towards the nearby car park. "No one's gonna hurt you. I'll make sure of it."

"You're taking me back to HYDRA," she protests. "After I spent _months_ spying on them! What do you think is going to happen to me, if not harm?"

"I think I'm gonna help you with this trauma thing you've got going," he says. "It'll be easier, now that you won't have to worry about keeping your cover. And since I know you're SHIELD, you can give me the real story—since I'm guessing the one you shared before was a lie."

He's truly starting to disturb her with this _trauma_ thing. He's a HYDRA specialist—she's seen him do monstrous things and heard him talking about doing even worse. Why on earth would he care about her mental state?

"Do you really think HYDRA will _let_ you?" she asks. "You believe they'll let you play—play _therapist_ to a traitor?"

His answering grin is nearly feral, and she wishes she could blame her shiver on fear. "I'd like to see them stop me."

Well. That's…well.

It takes her a moment to find her voice; by the time she does, they've reached the car park, and the waiting vehicle—one of HYDRA's ubiquitous black SUVs. It would appear she's out of time.

"And keeping me against my will?" she asks, without much hope. "You don't think _that_ will be traumatic for me?"

"Tell you what," he says, backing her up against the SUV. "If you can look me in the eye and tell me you don't feel anything for me at all, I'll let you go right now. No hard feelings. I'll even give you your gun back."

"I…oh."

Oh. Oh, dear. She can't actually say that, can she? Her skill in lying has improved tremendously, but not by _that_ much. Not so much that she can look the man she—what's the point in denying it?—loves in the eye and tell him she feels nothing.

Grant grins, wide and smug. "Yeah. That's what I thought."

Then he kisses her, and it doesn't even occur to her not to kiss back. Not until she's breathless, at least—not until she's on her toes with her hands fisted in his shirt, trying to pull him even closer.

She may actually be in even more trouble than she thought she was.

"Don't worry," he says, low and intimate, as he draws back. "I'll take good care of you."

He opens the car door for her, and she—trapped, breathless from his kiss, and exhausted after three months spent denying to herself just how much their relationship meant—climbs in without protest.


End file.
